Nowadays most of us parents are so fearful that we don't let our kids out long enough to play. In the mud. In the leaves. In the yard. Climbing the tree. You know: what we used to call childhood.

People who allow themselves to be corralled into today's reservations for urbanites, into high-density housing approved by the environuts on the metro zoning commission, are robbing their children of what feeble grasp they can get of nature, on a regular basis.

Am I overstating the case? Maybe.

But it's heartening to discover real ecologists talking about suburban life as one of biodiversity. We may be annoyed by the rats on stilts, alarmed by the emboldened coyote, and have more than a little reason to decide that the cawing of the crows ain't up there with the elegant rhetoric of the nightingale, but these staples of suburban life do amount to an advantage over concrete, brick, and sheetrock jungles where the most peaceful station of the day is the lobby water fountain, filled with pennies.

In Britain, studies are said to have "shown that building at the kinds of densities required by the UK Government will likely reduce the populations of even those birds that are well adapted to city living."

It's of course obviously the case that not all non-human life thrives near humans. It's good to know there are rural areas as well as areas like where I live. And it's great to know there are wilderness areas and set-asides and all that, too.

But the simple truth of the matter is that it is in suburbia that most civilized humans experience the most "nature," the most wildlife.

Some of it we call nuisance. But hey: take it where you can get it. Stop and eat the roses. (That last line is for those rats on stilts out there.)